On a visit to Uzès in France one year, we ate lunch at a Moroccan restaurant serving tagines. I became completely hooked and tagines have become a regular part of our diet. Preserved lemons are, in my view, so essential…
Category: Main
Chicken Green Curry
In Thailand, I kept trying other meals but I kept returning to their well known green curry. The term curry is something of a misnomer being borrowed from Indian cuisine by the British. The Thai name refers to a spice…
Charcoal Roasted Duck
Normally I’d call this “barbecued” but, since this requires indirect cooking in a kettle barbecue, “charcoal roasted” seems to be a more accurate description. This is simply a pleasant way to cook a duck so the fat runs out and…
Cassoulet II
For years I’ve been cooking a cassoulet recipe from the Roux Brothers’ French Country Cooking. Then, up pops my fish hero upstart, Rick Stein, with his French Odyssey containing a recipe that is much simpler, probably more like a typical…
Cassoulet
This must be one of the classic carnivore fests – large quantities of various meats buried in meltingly tender haricot beans. (The other carnivore fest is Choucroute Alsacienne which has large quantities of meat buried in sauerkraut.) Start your Cassoulet…
Bouillabaisse
This is based upon a recipe from The Cooking of Provincial France by Time Life books. My basis for the bouillon is always a mixture of whatever fish stocks I happen to have in the freezer at the time. The…
Bolognese Sauce
This has developed from a combination of recipes in the Encyclopædia of European Cookery and the Marshall Cavendish Handbook of Good Cooking . It is the basis for Spaghetti Bolognese (of course) and for Lasagne Bolognese. I always make twice…
Beef Stroganov
Here’s one of those old classics that is somewhat out of vogue with the modern style, being a rich dairy sauce. Nonetheless, a good one takes a bit of beating and it is quick and easy to make. So, I…
Bar Braisé aux Aromats
Sea bass is certainly one of the finest fish available and is particularly good accompanied by a beurre blanc sauce, as here. This is an adaptation of a recipe from Classic French Cooking published by Time Life. In the original,…
Authentic Paella Valenciana
This is apparently how an authentic Paella from the Valencia region (where it was developed) is made. The claim that it is the authentic version was made on an Alicante website and it also appears to match precisely the one…